Simulation of the behavior of ants in a colony.
Simulation of the movements, actions and communication of a number of n ants and m robber ants. The program is built to mimic the actions of ants in real life in order to help the user gain a better understanding of the way ants forage for food. The program is written in C# and developed in Microsoft Visual Studio 2012. The main objective of both the ants and robber ants is to look for food and when found, go back to their nest and deposit the food. As an individual, an ant is merely powerless and will not be able to survive. However, when there are hundreds, thousands or even millions of ants in a group, they can collectively carry out a number of very complex tasks in order to survive. This is known as collective intelligence. The program described in this report will try to emulate this.
Classes used:
Shown above is a list of all the classes used in the program. The AntColonyForm class is the main class that contains the form design and all the main code in the program. As the program is coded in an object-oriented manner, there are several additional classes for the ants, nests, food, robber ants and robber nests. The purpose of these classes is to store information about each ant, food, etc. such as if an ant is carrying food or not. There are lists, which will be explained in more detail further into the report, that are linked to these classes. Also, these classes are used to create each ant or food.